The original ABC language, Python's predecessor (1991)

Nice find. This looks like the best introduction to the language in the repo: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gvanrossum/abc-unix/refs/h...

	▲	nuancebydefault 27 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Wow 2 * 1000 without rounding errors, 40 years ago this must have been super impressive, since I find that quite a feat of today's python.

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ahartmetz an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Interesting, seems like Python is a strict improvement over ABC though many things are very similar. The PUT ... IN ... and INSERT ... IN ... syntax looks quite clunky and un-composable, at least the examples never do more than one (high-level) operation per line. Also, I guess GvR's English wasn't that good at the time - it should be have been INTO, right?

	▲	zahlman an hour ago \| parent [-]
		"in" vs "into" is often just a matter of how casually you're speaking. The same sort of syntax was used in HyperTalk (with "into"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperTalk#Description I wouldn't be surprised to hear of it in AppleScript, either, although I can't recall.

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zahlman 39 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Extremely cool. Thanks, GvR.

For my own language design I've wanted to introduce some of this ABC syntax back into Python. Mainly for unpacking data and doing index/slice assignments; a lot of beginners seem to get tripped up because assignments in Python use the same syntax as mutations, so maybe it's better to write e.g. `a['b'] = c` like `set b = c in a`, or `update a with {'b': c}`, or ... who knows, exactly.

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dec0dedab0de 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The year says 91, but it looks like it was recently pushed to github, which is a notable event on its own.

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perrohunter 37 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Where is the GIL in this?